Tara Murray
The doors are back open at Tin Shed.
The shed, also known as the St Albans Community Youth Club, reopened on Monday after being forced to close last year due to COVID-19 and its manager moving on.
New centre manager James Dredge was happy to open a week later than originally planned after a false start due to last week’s five-day snap lockdown, .
“I think it’s been closed since about September last year when the manager resigned,” Mr Dredge said.
“Because we were in the middle of lockdown, the decision was made to leave it until the appointment of a new manager and it took a while.
“I’m getting people from all over the place, really keen to have it reopen. It has a real place in the St Albans community.”
Mr Dredge, who previously worked in St Albans, said he jumped at the chance to get back into the local community.
While he has plenty of ideas about what he would like to do at the centre, the first focus is getting the centre, which has been running for nearly 50 years, back up and running.
“I’ve only just started and I want to see what they want,” he said.
“More than anything, I want to get it open and look to have conversations with the people of St Albans about what they would like to see here.
“There is a history of physical activities for young people and I would like them to remain. There will be plenty of new initiatives along the way.”
The centre will have an official reopening down the track when everything is back up and running.
Until then, Mr Dredge has one message.
“Anyone who wants to come in and say hello, come in and do so.”
